Numerous toothbrushes and tooth cleansing devices have been proposed in the prior art. These toothbrushes do not adequately clean all of the surfaces and fissures of the teeth, and in particular, fail to penetrate and clean the periodontal area. Furthermore, most conventional toothbrushes do not adequately massage the gingival tissues. As a result, these devices provide inadequate dental hygiene.
A number of prior art devices have sought to improve upon the conventional toothbrush. U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,570 (Hitzman) discloses a toothbrush with multi-tufted bristles designed to clean exposed areas of the user's teeth as well as areas below the gum line. U.S. Pat. No. 4,776,054 (Rauch) discloses a toothbrush having bristles that are oriented in various directions to provide increased cleaning of interdental areas and improved gum massage.
While these hand-held toothbrushes represent improvements over prior toothbrushes, their effectiveness depends to a great degree on effective manipulation by the user. Hence, many of the possible benefits of these toothbrushes are not realized by users with poor brushing styles.
Other tooth-cleaning devices have been developed to reduce the dependency on the brushing style of the user. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,901 (Rabinowitz) discloses a U-shaped device which fits over an entire arch of teeth for cleaning all of the teeth simultaneously. U.S. Pat. No. 3,874,084 (Cole) discloses a device with arcuate lower and upper channels which fit over the lower and upper arches of teeth of the user. The channels are individually molded to fit the curvature of the user's jaws and are custom fitted with bristles in an orientation to cleanse the teeth and provide for penetration and cleansing of the gingival crevice. However, this device, which relies on the chewing motion of the user's jaws to manipulate the bristles, provides ineffective cleansing action. Furthermore, the design of this device causes the hardened housing of the device to come into contact with the free marginal gingiva, a result particularly undesirable in the case of users with sore or inflamed gingival tissues. Finally, the contact between the housing and the free marginal gingiva prevents the bristles from adequately penetrating and cleansing the gingival crevice.